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Category Archives: Home Decor

I’m dreaming of a bright craft room…(to the tune of White Christmas). Who has not wished for a space dedicated to their hobbies. A bright, clean, beautiful place that is all theirs. A meticulously organized space with a place for everything and a place to sit and breath in inspiration. OK, maybe that is a bit over the top, but a clean & organized half of a guest room sounds pretty nice!

Since we moved into our new house 2 years ago, I have been planning to design a functional room for both crafting and guests. After many hours of daydreaming and browsing Pinterest for inspiration (follow my Home Decor – Craft Room board for more ideas), I am finally ready to pull the trigger and make this space pretty and functional. As I am busy behind the scenes here making this transformation take place, here are a few of the rooms I used for inspiration:

Sabrina at Pink Little Notebook nailed it with her simple, clean look in her office reveal. I am really loving the white furniture and that gorgeous blue countertop. Her room is organized and bright and serene enough to get deep in thought or craft mode. I will need a bit more storage area in my design however to stash aware all the goodies I tend to horde.

Besides storage, lots of countertop to work on is a huge priority for me too. Erin at Strawberry MomCakes is inspiring me to consider a corner desk in my space to use the L shape as an advance for additional countertop space. Once again she went with crisp, clean and white as well and I love it!

I just love this pegboard the Abby from Just A Girl and Her Blog created. You can check out the process here, and click around to see her awesome craft room makeover. Abby is quickly becoming one of my top bloggers to follow as I love her style, craftiness and blogging advice. I definitely want to incorporate a pegboard in my craft room for beautiful organization of tools.

Another pegboard I love is from Claire at Heart Handmade UK, especially the coral color. I am planning on either coral or teal as the accent color in my crafting space, and maybe a little of each. I love the way the color pops against the white furniture and the corner desk is perfect for my room too.

Now it is time to stop dreaming and start doing. Back to work on making my dream space a reality. Please stop by and follow my Craft Room board on Pinterest for more of my favorite craft room ideas and inspirations!

So remember that Ikea hack decoupage coffee table we used to have in the living room of our apartment? It was created and blogged about way back when I first started this blog over 3 years ago now. Crazy how time flies!! If you have forgotten it looked like this: I love this table and love being able to look back on all those memories each day, but with the new house and trying to start investing in “grown-up” furniture, it was time to say goodbye to this $30 table. Before the move I just could not let go and did not want to see our faces thrown in the trash along with the table and voiced this to my husband. Out of the blue he speaks up with a “Why don’t you just take of the legs and keep the top as an art piece?” Genius. Goodbye coffee table, hello beautiful and personalized entry way art!

For this simple Ikea hack of an Ikea hack, we removed the legs from the table. Next, we purchased a frame hanging kit. We used two eyelet screws and heavy duty hanging wire.

I screwed in the eyelets about 9 inches from the top and 6 inches in from the edges. To get them started used a screwdriver and screw to create a lead hole. Then I grunted and man handled the eyelet screw into place.

Next I measured out the correct length of hanging wire to attach to the eyelets.

Thread the wire through each eyelet and wrap to secure.

Now it is time to pick the wall and hang the art!

A simple update to keep this Ikea Hack alive and well in our home. I love how it looks hanging in our entry way and I am so happy it did not end up in a landfill somewhere!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!! Last year I bought this cute little wooden haunted house right after Halloween. It was 50% off plus I had a coupon so I was able to get it for a steal. I loved the cute little metal bats and cobwebs and whimsical slanted roof lines. I knew I could paint it up easily and add it to my very limited indoor Halloween decor items.

After rummaging through my paint drawer I knew exactly what I was going to do. I have these fun green and purple glitter paints and I also grabbed black for the roof and yellow for the windows.

As you can see, it took a few coats to get the color intensity I was aiming for.

But the finished product is awesome! I cute little Halloween house we can use on our entry table for years to come.

My favorite part of my Zombie Attack Halloween decor this year is this DIY warning zombies sign. I decided to make instead of buying because I wanted it to be personalized and I can never pass on a chance for a fun craft day. After searching around on Pinterest and thinking about what I wanted to do, I came up the this look for my sign.

To make this sign you will need a square wooden board, a wooden stake, paint, red gel food coloring and spray acrylic sealant. To start out I painted the entire board cream. I then used my yard stick to separate the top section and painted it black. I then played around with red and black for the outside border of the sign. Once dried I freehand painted “Warning” and “Zombies”.

Next I racked my brain on how to do the blood on the sign. I ended up grabbing a tube of red gel food coloring from my baking cupboard and smeared it all over my hand. I then grabbed the sign in a few places and used one finger to write out “Save Your Self”. The texture of the gel food coloring gave some great depth and detail and really looks like blood.

After letting it dry for over 24 hours, I took the sign outside and added multiple coats of clear acrylic spray paint. The red food coloring has already faded a bit and is really not water resistant. I am not sure if it will hold up all that great over time, but I can always re-do that portion for the future if it fades away.

Don’t have time to make a zombie sign? Good news is that there are a ton of them out there to buy and they run about $10-$15 a piece. Here are a few examples I saw at the Spirit store that would have worked great too.

I LOVE Halloween! This year for our outside decor I decided to go with a zombie attack theme. I had big plans of going all out, but kept it pretty simple in the end to save money and time while still having fun. So, let’s go for a tour around our front yard…

Let’s start out in the little cubby area next to our front door. Same as last year, I began by adding some webs and spiders. I decided to use regular webs this year, since the black light ones did not light up as well as I hoped.

Also at SpiritHalloween.com or the Spirit Halloween stores that pop up during this season, we were able to find some foam distressed boards to use on our windows. I tried using double sided tape, but after a couple hours they started to fall. So I pull out my staple gun and secured each plank to the wall around the window. For the bigger windows I was able to tape two planks together and span the gap that way.

I also found some fun fake barb wire and wrapped the front post with it. It looks to be just twine rope painted in silver, so I might make my own in the future if I need more. I bought two stands this year and saved the second strand to use on my zombie sign.

Panning over to the trees along the path, I added more spiderwebs and glittery spiders. I bought 3 bags of web this year and was able to cover a lot more area than last year. I did the same look on the main tree in front of our house by wrapping it in purple lights and then web and spiders. I bought new lights because the cheap ones from Party City last year kept failing. These are much more vibrant LED lights we picked up on sale at Target right after Halloween last year.

To add some creepiness we have our native giant spider making an appearance too again this year. He is much too heavy for the web, so I use thread to tie him the the branch for added support.

Now on the the main new additions this year. Since I had so much fun last year making the wooden trick or treat sign, I decided to do it again this year by making a warning zombie sign. You can learn more about how I did it here.

I am really happy with how the sign turned out and it really adds to the overall look and theme. I had some left over black cloth from last year so I simply covered the bush and threw some more up in the tree.

This big bush came in handy for the sign too. Instead of having to hammer it into the ground, I stuck it into the bush and done.

One finishing touch…adding some zombie hands to the lawn, also found at the Spirit store. So there you have it, cheap and fairly easy Zombie Attack Halloween decor.

Still need some last minute Halloween items or want to buy now of next year? Enjoy 20% off and shop lots of sale items.

I’m back with another edition of the slowest blog post series ever seen. Once the wall paper was removed and the holes patched, it was time to start painting. For this room I decided on Glidden Hazy Sage color matched in Behr interior Semi-gloss paint with primer.

I wanted the guest bath to have a calming, spa feel to it. My inspiration came from this room from Better Homes & Garden. I love the calm green walls, dark cabinets and open shelving. Peaceful and clean.

So I grabbed a sample can of Hazy Sage and put a spot on the wall to see how it looked . This is one of the few rooms in our house where a second sample was not necessary. I immediately knew this was the color I was looking for.

On with the painting…I love this color!

Once all the edges were cut in, it was time to tackle the cabinets next. I’ll back back soon with an update on how they turned out! Anyone else tackling a bathroom facelift recently?

On a rainy weekend a few weeks ago I got the wild idea stuck in my head that I wanted to watercolor a piece of art, namely a watercolor world map, for my new office at work.

We just upgraded to a much larger building and the bare walls in my office were screaming for attention. Keep in mind, I have never really done any watercolor art, unless you count playing around with those little sets as a kid. So, this was going to either be a triumph over a new craft, or I would end up angrily breaking things while I throw a temper tantrum over it not working like I think it should. But only time would tell so after a quick trip to Joann’s I was ready to give it a go and try to watercolor a world map.

Being new to the art, I have to get the proper supplies.

Large watercolor paper*, approximately 30×22 = $3.50 (50% off regular $6.99 with coupon)

I also grabbed a pad of water color paper to play around on first, but not as part of the project so I am not including it in the cost. Add in 2 mugs of warm water, and it is time to get started.

Before getting started with the painting, I needed to draw the world map outline. I hopped on Google and found an image of the world that was nice and clean and perfect for this job. Taking that image I scaled it up to be the right size for my paper (20×30) and printed it out over multiple pieces of paper. I then taped them together to create one large template and laid that over my water color paper. Using a pen and a heavy hand, I traced the entire world…yes the entire world, leaving a nice indent on the watercolor paper to follow.

After removing the template, I got a pencil and drew lines along the indentations. Now I had the basis of the world map to color in with water colors.

Step one for in me watercolor was to learn the process. I did this on a small piece of paper until I thought I had the idea down and then moved on the the traced map. The process I found to work best to achieve my desired look was to take my brush and apply a thin coating of water to one section of the map at a time. Once the water was on I could choose my first color to paint. I liked to start on the edge of one of the land masses and move across, blending the colors as I switched from one to another. By painting each area with water first it helped the color to spread nicely but stay contained within the water lines.

I went wild with all colors, but you could keep it simple and just do a couple tones of blues and greens for a more subdued look. For some of the smaller areas, like the islands, I went ahead and just dabbed the color on without adding water first. Don’t be afraid of using the water either though. If it starts to get too wet, you can grab a paper towel to absorb excess and then start over. Do be careful to not over blend though, the changes between the colors need to look natural but not muddied.

The project took about 4 hours from start to finish, so not too bad for an afternoon craft. The longest part was tracing the map onto the paper to have lines to follow. I might be artistic, but I am definitely not good enough to think I can free hand the world.

As the map dried, the color calmed a little bit and got a chalky finish. This might just be the type of watercolors I was using, but either way I really liked the final outcome.

I can’t take all the credit for this beautiful idea though. It came to me one day while browsing Pinterest and I pinned a few variations on my DIY board. There are even a few artists on Etsy who sell hand-painted and/or images of watercolor world maps. But, as usual I wanted to test myself and see if I could do it first before settling on buying one. I love supporting other artisans, but there is also a great deal of satisfaction in doing it with your own two hands. Now the shame part….the map then sat in my craft room next to the frame for two weeks before I finally got around to framing it and I still need to bring it to my office and hang it. Maybe next week?

Why is it taking me so long to finish posting about our bathroom makeover?!? I mean seriously, it took a week to complete and over 8 months to post! Wow, crazy. Anyways, when I last left you hanging 2 weeks ago on my guest bath updates, I had a bad case of “claw hand” and was slowly cutting away the remnants of wall paper along the molding and bead-board. After hours of tedious work, the wall paper was completely gone and we were left with a few gouge lines and cut marks along the trim.

I grabbed a bottle of white paint-able caulking and went to work filling in all the gaps and crevices. Being a novice with most things home improvement I was not really sure what I was doing, but overall it was a pretty easy and fast process, although messy.

I would squeeze out a line of caulk and then using a paper towel or my bare finger I would smooth it out and wipe off any excess goop.

And the finished product looks so amazing. I can’t believe what a difference some caulking can make!

I also walked around with some spackling paste and filled in any other small holes along the walls. Crisp, clean and ready to be painted!

Well, almost ready to be painted at least. While the caulking and small spackle spots dried, I went to tackle the larger patch job that needed to happen above the sink. You may remember the bar light with exposed light bulbs that ran along the wall. Upon removing it , we discovered that we were left with a couple big holes. Bummer.

I knew these holes were not going to be as easy to fix, but it was too late to turn back now. So off to Home Depot again we went.

We found this wall patch kit and decided to give it a try, along with our spackle and a sanding square.

The first step was to cut a square patch of the plaster mesh large enough to cover each hole and then some to make sure it have coverage to attach to the wall.

Next I laid the patch on the wall with the hole in the middle. It is slightly sticky so it stayed in place while I grabbed my water bottle.

Now it was time to mist the entire patch to wet the built in plaster. Using my hand I rubbed the entire surface gently to activate and adhere.

Once it was blended in, it was time to add the spackle. Here is where the problem started.

We have textured walls and no matter how hard I tried, I could not mimic the texture pattern with free handing it. I should have stopped and gone back to get a texturing kit or something, but I decided I could wing it.

Once dry, I opted to try sanding down the whole area, hoping it might blend a bit better. While that did help a little, it is quite noticeable that the texture is missing in the area of those two patches. Oh well, you live and learn right? And with the new light fixture over the top it will be less noticeable…hopefully.

This post is long overdue. One of the first things we accomplished after moving into our new house was to update the guest bathroom. Being that Alex uses this as his bathroom (yes we have separate bathrooms and it is fabulous), I wanted to find a soothing look to match his style and work for guests. First things first, in order to paint we had to remove the wall paper. Here are a couple before pictures, of the sink area with medicine cabinet…

Once the top layer is all removed, we started the harder part of spraying with our water & fabric softener mixture and peeling the glued on under layer off the walls.

Finally, the blank walls came shiny through, with one little problem…

It appears that the wall paper was in place before the crown moulding and wainscoting were installed.

Those pesky wall paper remnants were not going down without a fight.

So on to the most tedious step, using a box cutter to slowly work my way around the room and cut out those last scraps of wall paper. Many hand cramps and a stiff neck later, the wall paper will finally say goodbye.

Merry Christmas Eve!! Today we will be heading down to spend the holidays with Alex’s family and I can’t wait. Good food, wine and a present swap. I know I promised this tutorial on how to make an easy snowflake wreath a while back when I first posted about our holiday mantel for this season, and here it is finally.

To get it started, I found these foam snowflakes at Joann’s. My initial plan was to use felt and cut out snowflakes, but then I spotted these snowflake packs at 50% off I knew I could save a lot of time and labor by using them. Half the pack is glittered and the other half is plain white. Being that I wanted all glittered snowflakes, I bought 2 packs.

Next I grabbed a wire wreath frame and a 12×12 piece of paper. I then traced a large circle onto the paper to act as my wreath frame. With the foam being so light I did not want to use a real wreath frame, but I created a paper one to make sure I kept my snowflake in a perfect circle shape.

Once traced onto the paper, cut it out.

Now you have the perfect circle for the wreath base.

Using my glue gun, I started gluing on the snowflakes.

Keep adding on snowflakes as you work around the wreath. To make them look more random, I moved around as I added them and made sure they did not all overlap in the same way.

And after about 25 snowflakes, we have a finished snowflake wreath!

Once all the snowflakes are glued down and it has cooled, it is time to add ribbon. I found this shiny green ribbon in my wrapping tote and thought it would work great.

I glued the ribbon down on the back in the wreath and created a fun little bow to the front. To hang it above our fireplace I simply used a tack through the middle of the ribbon bow.

And there you have it. A super simple holiday wreath. I think it looks great in our dining room on the bold navy walls, but you could also hang it on your door for some festive holiday decor.